radu stancu: Yeah, but capturing en passant will open the e file for black's f rook. Notice that defending against f5 with Rg5 runs into Qxf4#. White's best move seems to be Kf5 but even that one won't save him after 28. Ne7+ Kg5 29. Rxe5+ Kh4 30. Nf5+ Kg3 31. Re6

PBE6: I just got a copy of John Nunn's "Understanding Chess Move By Move", and as the title suggests, it present a great detailed description of this game "move by move". Nunn considers 12. f4? to be too ambitious, with white seeking to reinforce the e-pawn and push his d-pawn but at the expense of king safety. He considers 12. Qd2 followed by 13. 0-0-0 to be much more solid.

He also considers black's follow-up, 12. ... Rd8! to be an excellent alternative to the natural 12. ... 0-0-0, as it avoids a bishop pin after 12. ... 0-0-0 13. c5 Nd5 14. Nxd5 Qxd5 15. Bf3 Qd7 16. d5. Now black can't play 16. ... exd6 as it leaves his queen and king skewered after 17. Bg4.

Note to the author - those boys with lumpy shirts are called girls. Why not say hello to them (as long you don't talk about turtles living in the New York sewer and eating pizza)?

As a sidenote: the British Broadcasting Corporation, in their immense wisdom, decided that it was far too risky to expose British youngsters to these subversive and violent themes. So when we got the turtles, they had to be renamed "teenage mutant <hero> turtles".

As if that made it okay to mess around with katanas...

Not quite sure what all this has to do with the game. There's something rather wonderful about watching a big centre being demolished. or in this case, the big centre wasn't demolished. Instead, white was killed inside his big centre, like a turtle being murdered inside his shell by someone shoving pointy sticks through his leg 'oles. Gruesome.

Phony Benoni: <Once> I thought "Cowabunga" referred to the cry of battle shouted by sun-bleached California surfers as they defied death to ride the Giant Killer Wave. You know, sort of what the White king does here.

Ratt Boy: Good catch, badMojo. It's got to be a Turtles reference.
They were all named for Renaissance painters: Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Rafael. That's more obscure than most GOTD titles, but an occasional obscurity is healthy.

Knight13: <Good catch, badMojo. It's got to be a Turtles reference. They were all named for Renaissance painters: Donatello, Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Rafael. That's more obscure than most GOTD titles, but an occasional obscurity is healthy.> Not all of them were just painters. For example, Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo were also engineers and sculptors (but da Vinci was also an inventor and scientist; Michelangelo, a poet as well). Donatello was also a sculptor. Michelangelo was da Vinci's archrival; they fought psychological warfare against each other, attacking each other's works and whatnot. Da Vinci ended up being more famous and well-known to the general public, but Michelangelo's painting of the Sistine Chapel, comissioned by Pope Julius II, sure was very beautiful. Rafael got his first commissioned painting at age seventeen --- an altarpiece for the church of Sant'Agostino in Citta di Castello. Donatello was one of the people who revived the "contrapposto" style of painting and sculpting from antiquity, which contrasted the hip and shoulder axes of their figures to create an illusion of bodily movement. By the way, check out da Vinci's <Notebooks>. :-)

capanegra: 11…Qd7 was apparently the novelty here. In Eales and Williams' "Alekhine’s Defense", only the move 11…Qh4+ is analyzed, and in the chess opening explorer this is the only game with 11...Qd7 (11…Qh4+ appears in 28 games).

With Qd7 and Rd8, Vaganian pressures on d4. At first sight it looks that after 13.d5 White gains huge territorial predominance, but 13…Bb4! dismantles his plans (14…dxc6? is not possible because of Qxc6 touching the simultaneously White's Queen and Rook).

Vaganian won following the philosophy of the Alekine Defense for Black: provoke a too far advance of White's Pawns for keeping them safe, and counterattack from the flanks.

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